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What you’re getting yourself into:

Key points:

Drive the bar back toward your face as you press the bar off your chest instead of initiating the press by driving the bar straight up. This makes the lift MUCH more efficient.

Most people can bench press more weight pretty quickly simply by correcting their bar path, and at the elite levels, adopting a more efficient bar path is the primary way lifters keep improving their numbers.

That’s about it. The rest of the article is mainly graphs and pictures to illustrate this point in case it doesn’t click for you right away.

Let’s take a trip back in time to 1984.

1984 was a great year, for three primary reasons

Van Halen put out their best album (some people argue for 5150. They are wrong).

Apple launched the Macintosh computer.

Thomas McLaughlin published Bench Press More Now: Breakthroughs in Biomechanics and Training Methods.

To this day, McLaughlin’s book is probably the best resource for the bench press in existence. It’s not without its faults or omissions (it doesn’t even touch on leg drive, for example), and it’s probably a hair too technical for some readers, but I haven’t come across another resource that approaches its combined level of technical analysis and applicability.

It’s a shame that more lifters don’t know of the work that came out of McLaughlin’s lab at Auburn. From the late ’70s through the ’80s, they published a lot of very good, very applicable studies on powerlifting. McLaughlin and several of his research partners were nationally ranked powerlifters, and they gathered a lot of their data from the best source imaginable if you want to understand elite powerlifting performance: high-level powerlifting meets. In several of their studies, they wouldn’t include a lifter’s data unless the lifter was ranked in the top 10 in his weight class. In one particularly amusing example from a squat study, their “low skill” group included lifters who squatted 620 at 242 and 550 at 193 (their “high skill” group included only national champions).

At its core, the book is based on several studies that compared the bench press technique of world-class benchers to the bench press technique of “novice” benchers (their novices still benched 224 at 170, on average, and would be considered “well-trained” by the standards of a lot of studies) with maximal loads. Any old-looking picture in this article comes McLaughlin’s books, which you can read spread across 16 parts on everyone’s favorite old-time strength blog (part 1 is here).

It has a lot of interesting insights, but there’s just one that I want to focus on in this article: bar path.

He found that both the novice benchers and the elite benchers lowered the bar using a similar pattern: roughly a straight line, arcing out slightly. However, their bar paths during the press itself differed drastically. The novice lifters pressed almost straight up initially, with the bar then moving up and back more toward the top half of the lift. The elite lifters followed the opposite pattern – they initially pressed the bar up and back at the start of the lift, and finished the lift by pressing the bar almost straight up toward the top half of the lift.

The picture on the left shows the bar path of a novice benching 245lbs. In the middle is Mike Bridges benching 463lbs. On the right is Kaz benching 605lbs.

When he looked at elite lifters who’d improved their performance over time (since he collected data at all the major meets over a 4-year period), and compared them to elite lifters whose performance had stalled, he saw the same trend. Elite lifters who hadn’t improved their bench numbers used roughly the same bar path every year, while elite lifters whose bench numbers continued to rise pushed the bar back toward their face to start the press more and more as their lifts improved.

Why is this?

The simplest explanation: This technique decreases total flexion demands at the shoulder with any given grip width.

To complete a bench press, you have to perform three basic movements: shoulder flexion (like a front delt raise), shoulder horizontal flexion (like a pec fly), and elbow extension.

This article isn’t going to address elbow extension demands (how hard a lift is for your triceps) because this article seeks to isolate the effects of bar path, which doesn’t affect elbow extension demands too terribly much; elbow extension demands are primarily a function of grip width and whether your elbows stay under the bar or not.

So we’re left with two functions that are impacted by bar path: shoulder flexion, and shoulder horizontal flexion.

Luckily, we can simplify things even further, because differentiating between the two doesn’t matter all that much for our purposes here. The main muscles carrying out both roles are your pecs and your front delts. Both of them can flex the shoulder, and both of them can horizontally flex the shoulder. The front delts are a bit better at flexion, and the pecs are a bit better at horizontal flexion, but they both contribute, regardless of the mix of flexion and horizontal flexion demands. So, rather than separate out flexion and horizontal flexion demands, I’ll just lump both of them together and refer to the sum of flexion and horizontal flexion demands as “total flexion demands.”

So, what determines total flexion demands?

As with anything else: joint moments. Load x moment arm.

If you shorten the moment arm, total flexion demands decrease, so you can lift a greater load, or you can lift a given load with more ease. So, what determines the length of the moment arm?

Imagine a plane passing through your shoulder joint that’s parallel to the floor. Since the barbell’s force is pressing straight down into your hand, draw a line straight down from your hand to the plane. Then draw a straight line between that intersection point and your shoulder. That’s your moment arm.

Don’t worry! That sounds convoluted, but it’s actually pretty simple. There are two things that change the length of that moment arm:

Grip width

The distance from the bar to your shoulder in the frontal plane (if you’re looking at it from the side, then this would be the horizontal distance between the bar and your shoulder).

A wider grip increases the length of this moment arm, as does increased distance from the bar to your shoulder in the frontal plane. Grip width determines the horizontal flexion aspect of total flexion demands, and frontal-plane distance from the bar to the shoulder determines the flexion aspect of total flexion demands.

So, assuming any given grip width and any given load, the only thing that really impacts total shoulder flexion demands is the position of the bar in relation to the shoulder. Total flexion demands at the shoulder decrease the closer the bar is to being directly over the shoulder, and total flexion demands at the shoulder increase the further the bar is from the shoulder in the frontal plane.

Grip width doesn’t change (dark blue), but as the bar gets further in front of the shoulder (light blue), the moment arm (black) gets longer and longer, meaning the lift gets harder and harder.

I think we all realize this when we’re holding the bar at lockout. It’s a lot easier to hold the bar directly over your shoulders than it is to hold the bar over your sternum or your upper stomach, for example. The exact same principle applies at every other point in the lift.

Of course, if you wanted to take this principle to its logical extreme, you’d assume that the guillotine press must inherently be the most efficient way to bench press. Keep the bar directly over your shoulders the whole time, and you’re golden, right?

Touching the bar lower on your chest obviously shortens the range of motion, assuming you get a decent arch. Not only does this decrease the effort required to complete each rep with a given load, it also keeps you from having to go through extreme ranges of motion that will inherently be weaker. Regardless of external moments, maximal internal moments – the moments your muscles produce at each joint to move your limbs and extend the bar – drop off rapidly as range of motion increases past a certain point.

Touching low can be overdone too, of course. If you touch too low, total flexion demands continue increasing, negating any advantage you may have gotten by limiting range of motion. As with most things, there’s a happy middle. Anywhere from just below the nipples to about an inch below the xiphoid process of your sternum works best for most people.

Assuming you touch the bar (reasonably) low on your chest/high on your stomach, the next challenge is to actually press the weight back up.

This is where McLaughlin’s research comes into play.

The novice lifters initiated the press by shoving the bar essentially straight up off their chest, with the bar path angled back only slightly. Since the bar didn’t move back toward their shoulders very much, total flexion demands at the shoulders were still very high (relative to the load they were lifting) when the bar reached the sticking point of the lift a few inches off the chest.

The elite lifters, on the other hand, initiated the press by shoving the bar up off their chests and back toward their shoulders. Since the bar did move back toward their shoulders, total flexion demands at the shoulders decreased as the bar approached the sticking point.

Average bar paths for novice lifters (dashed line) vs. elite lifters (solid line). Especially pay attention to the short segment between points 4 and 6 on each line.

Compare the sticking points (the point where the lifters were applying the smallest amount of force to the bar) of the novice lifters to those of the elite lifters:

One thing worth noting about this picture: The “heavy experts” dot is a bit further from the shoulder than it “should” be if this was scaled for body size. The novices and the light experts were roughly the same height and had torsos roughly the same length, but the heavy experts were taller and had longer torsos, so 5 inches in front of their shoulders would be closer to ~4 inches in front of the shoulders of the other two groups, so for an even more accurate representation, that dot should be moved back toward the head a bit.

Regardless, both groups of experts had much less horizontal distance between the bar and their shoulders than did the novice group. This helps minimize the total shoulder flexion demands, increasing how much force they could apply to the bar.

So, how large of a payoff can you expect from that technique change?

A pretty big one.

Force output at different points in the movement for novice and elite lifters.

McLaughlin found that the elite benchers could bench about 10-12% less than the maximum force observed in the movement, and about 4-5% more than the minimum force observed in the movement. The novices, on the other hand, could bench about 35% less than the the maximum force observed in the movement, and about 7-8% more than the minimum force observed in the movement.

Remember, you don’t miss a lift because you are too weak through the full range of motion. You miss a lift because you were too weak through the very weakest part of the lift. For all three groups, their bench maxes were slightly above their minimum force output, which is what you’d expect. It doesn’t matter if you have “extra” maximum force at some stronger point in the lift – your minimum force at the weakest point in the lift is what will stop you from completing a rep.

In both groups of elite lifters, their minimum force output was only about 13-14% lower than their maximum force output, indicating a very smooth and efficient lift, whereas for the novice lifters, their minimum force output was about 32-33% lower than their maximum force output, indicating a very inefficient lift.

That inefficiency primarily came from their bar path. Their force production dropped off so rapidly because when they reached the position of minimum force – the sticking point – they were in a horrible position to exert force on the bar because the total flexion demands at the shoulder were unnecessarily high.

If we took a myopic view of this information, we’d assume that simply changing the bar path would instantly increase their bench press from 224 to about 270 (about 10-12% less than their maximum force output, bringing them in line with the elite lifters) instantly.

Obviously that never happens in the real world…at least not instantaneously.

As previously mentioned, one thing that McLaughlin noted in his research was that the elite lifters’ maximum force output didn’t change much from year to year, but some continued adding weight to their bench press, while some plateaued.

The ones who kept benching more and more in spite of minimal changes in maximum force output were the ones who altered their technique over time, pushing the bar back toward their shoulders further and sooner. The people who didn’t keep adding weight to their bench press were the ones who didn’t make this technique adjustment.

Here’s the type of change this adjustment can make:

Mike Bridges added 60lbs to his bench in a year (386 to 446) by altering his bar path to dramatically increase the minimum force he could exert on the bar. Force = mass x acceleration, and the minimum acceleration (labeled “7” on both graphs, coinciding with minimum force) increased dramatically between 1978 and 1979, allowing him to bench more even as maximum acceleration decreased (maximum force still increased a bit though, because there was more weight on the bar). This is the hallmark of more efficient technique: minimum force during the movement approaching maximum force.

However, it’s worth reiterating that it took Bridges an entire year to transform his technique and take his elite-level bench to world-record levels. There are two main reasons altering your bar path won’t increase your bench by nearly that much instantly:

It’ll take some practice for the new bar path to feel natural, and for you to build skill and automaticity with a slightly altered motor pattern.

Your current technique may be hiding weaknesses – specifically muscles that are currently weak through a particular range of motion.

However, neither of those things take too long to address, at least on the time scale of an entire training career. These are both areas where you can see meaningful progress in a matter of weeks or months, not a matter of years (unlike the glacial pace of hypertrophy at the elite levels).

Motor learning is a (relatively) fast process, and developing strength through this slightly different range of motion shouldn’t take too long, because the changes in joint angles and muscular demands aren’t particularly big.

This bar path makes the midrange of the lift a lot easier on the anterior deltoids, but slightly harder on the pecs. Splitting the total flexion demands apart again, shoulder flexion demands are way lower (which is why it’s easier on the anterior deltoids) and horizontal flexion demands are unchanged. However, when you reposition the bar over the shoulders, the anterior deltoids can’t help out quite as much anymore, so the movement gets a little more challenging for your pecs.

Simply correcting your bar path and benching with this technique should naturally strengthen the pecs more.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

Top: good. Bottom: bad.

One final question I’m sure someone will ask: Isn’t the easiest path between two points a straight line?

In this case, no. Remember, gravity is pulling the bar straight down. Total work done on the bar is simply defined by the vertical distance you have to move it, not total distance. If you’re touching the bar to the same place on your chest/stomach, you’re using the same grip width, and your arms aren’t magically getting longer or shorter, total work done on the bar is identical regardless of bar path.

This is a question about how to do that work the most efficiently.

Total work done on the bar is the same regardless of bar path, but driving back and then up is simply the most efficient way to go about producing that work.

Otherwise, work on purposefully driving the bar back toward your shoulders as you press it off your chest. Consistently take video to observe the changes. It may feel a little weird at first, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time.

Keep grinding away at it, and you should start hitting PRs within a couple of months (likely sooner).

If you want to see a great example of how this looks with huge weights in real time, check out this video from Dan Green:

One final technical note: some very savvy readers may notice that I disregarded horizontal forces on the bar in my analysis. However, in this case, they don’t change the overall picture because they would be the same regardless of bar path, so addressing them would have just bogged things down without any meaningful payoff.

Related

About Greg Nuckols

Greg Nuckols has over a decade of experience under the bar, and a BS in Exercise and Sports Science. He’s held 3 all-time world records in powerlifting in the 220 and 242 classes.

He’s trained hundreds of athletes and regular folks, both online and in-person. He’s written for many of the major magazines and websites in the fitness industry, including Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Bodybuilding.com, T-Nation, and Schwarzenegger.com. Furthermore, he’s had the opportunity to work with and learn from numerous record holders, champion athletes, and collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches through his previous job as Chief Content Director for Juggernaut Training Systems and current full-time work here on Stronger By Science.

His passions are making complex information easily understandable for athletes, coaches, and fitness enthusiasts, helping people reach their strength and fitness goals, and drinking great beer.

Comments

What about shoulder impingement with the bar being more over the shoulder and elbows closer to 90 degrees to the body…how’s that play in to this? If you are putting the bar closer to your shoulder level but your elbows not…wouldn’t this be working your triceps a lot more?

Impingement primarily becomes an issue if you’re both flaring and touching high (i.e. like a guillotine press). If you’re still touching low (somewhat tucked when the bar is on your chest, while also limiting horizontal extension via arching), most people should be perfectly fine flaring to keep their elbows under the bar as they drive it back.

I can’t help but think that in addition to the more favorable shoulder flexion angles, this type of bar path ensures a more stable groove with respect to the rotator cuff as well.

To drive off the chest with the intention to immediately guide the bar back towards the eyes in the optimal pattern that you described requires a ton of external rotator activation and strength.

We can think of this as so: Lifter lays supine with hands pronated and gripping bar.

Elbows come down to feet, (i.e. tucks, or comes under the bar a bit), humeral head is externally rotating.

Elbows come back towards eyes, (i.e. flares, or comes over the bar a bit), humeral head is internally rotating.

(Elbow is now moving due to a closed chain shoulder rotation; chain is closed at the bar, as compared to a dumbbell or cable exercise rotation exercise, where the elbow is fixed, and the hand then moves in an open chain.)

This process has been over-cued over-applied to its detriment, which you covered in your other bench press article linked. It’s something that kind of happens all on its own if this bar path is adopted and grooved..

If the lifter is able to wind up a bit at the shoulder enough to intentionally guide the bar immediately back towards the eyes, then the shoulder may be in a more stable position at its most vulnerable point off the chest.. Better stability may translate to more powerful drive off the chest, as the CNS senses “safety”.

This can be observed very clearly watching Jesse Norris’s bench press videos; you will see his elbows rotating exactly in this manner. The elbows stay under the bar, but are rotating down and then back up to match the bar path, low on the chest to above the shoulders.

Pt. 2: Doh! edited to clarify, Greg, I meant the “closed chain” rotation example as a visualization: to illustrate how the elbows might move around the bar fixed on the rack, and how this creates angles that will guide the bar either towards the eyes, or towards the feet, when we do the lift.

(This is one of the ways I try to explain and cue how rotation comes into play with new benchers.)

If you leave it at “elbows under the bar”, then that suggests a straight up and down, “Smith machine” bar path, which as your post indicates, is not probably not the best leveraged approach.

Obviously, the lift itself in open space is open chain, with the RC directing the course.

Very well written, good work Greg!
However, one little change would be good: change the “light blue” lines in the moment arm diagram to an even lighter blue or a different color. It´s hard to differentiate the two lines on some LCD´s at first sight.

Nope. You shouldn’t be worrying about that for the squat either. Focusing on individual muscles (internal cues) when lifting isn’t overly helpful in the first place. Focusing on the movement itself (external cues) works much better.

Greg, I must admit that this article confuses me, as whenever I miss a bench, my elbows flare out into a guillotine press position. I have been told this is due to weak lats, weak upper back, and weak pecs, but no special exercises have helped me fix this issue. Have you ever encountered a lifter that flares his elbows too soon off the chest when the weight gets heavy, and have you been able to fix it? Thank you!

The point is that you’re missing in that position because your body is trying to find its strongest position when the weights get really heavy. That’s not necessarily a “problem” that needs to be fixed. If you watch Dan Green’s bench at the end, his elbows flare out almost to 90% as soon as the bar leaves his chest.

Unless Austin is matching that freaky arch that Dan achieves, and then enhances through leg drive, then flaring the elbows too soon may destabilize the shoulders, and change the angle of the bar path. I think the early flare is the body trying to “cheat ahead” to the next stop in the line of force, before that angle is earned, so to speak. Pretty sure this is how Mark Bell tore his pec on his last go ’round with 600.

Dan is using a pretty sophisticated hip drive bench press technique. He thrusts his hips violently up the bench which increases his lumbar/thoracic spine arch and creates a little momentum,

As the hip thrust ripples up the body, the angle of his T-spine to the horizontal bench nears 45-degrees. Dan is now effectively performing a decline press, which is going to have a slightly different, and shorter bar path than a flatter back bench press will require.

Put the video on slow motion speed, and pause it at :25, with the bar on his chest. Driving from the hips, he forces the entire ribcage upward from the bottom. The humeral angle as it exits the torso in space is now different.

Dan, like a lot of savvy PLs, has effectively hacked the strength curve!

(It occurs to me that this is a lying down variation on the old Olympic lifting overhead press hacks, which got tossed out due to lifters changing the angle of the torso to turn the lift into a standing incline press. This is changing a flat press into a decline press. I digress.)

If you watch some of the real contortionist bench pressers, often women, they are basically able to do a lockout, a three board press essentially, on an allegedly flat press. They can flare away at that angle!

Thank you for the great article! I read the book, this article and have watched your elbow tuck video multiple times, but I am still lacking a little bit of understanding. Although I suppose one can never wipe out a technique issue with strength only, what is your take on the possible weaknesses that cause this error? Now that I’ve watched my training from videos (highly recommend Kinovea) I noticed that I have totally novice bar path and that might be the reason for anterior delt, pec etc. shoulder area pains along the years. My technique has improved in the couple of weeks but is still quite morbid.

To the point: when I drive directly up novice’ish, the movement is quite quick until almost lockout (bar is probably closer to belly button than shoulder joint 🙁 ), but when trying to get the bar closer to shoulder the beginning of the lift sucks but the later half is much more fun. Is my weakness muscle-wise in the pecs or possibly deltoids as they have difficulty in “pulling” the weight over the shoulder?

I use legdrive and have relatively good arch but this has not influenced my bar path at least yet. I put my bets on pause bench and really trying to sequence the legdrive to initiate the movement, hopefully to shoulder direction. Approved?

Hi Greg,
Awesome article! Do you think that maybe some of the initial bar path trajectory (towards the head) is more a result of an explosive leg drive at the beginning of the lift rather than a true intention of the lifter to press the bar towards the head and then upwards? Dan Green certainly gets terrific leg drive, and surely that momentum will influence the bar’s trajectory at the start of the concentric portion of the lift, right? And maybe an elite lifter will be much more adept at using the leg drive than a novice lifter, thus (maybe) explaining the difference in bar trajectories. I admit I have no idea, just throwing out an idea…

Thanks for the amazing content, and great job at the Lifting Lyceum this afternoon!

I think it’s both leg drive and intent. When lifters don’t get as good of leg drive, you’ll find that they generally don’t touch as low (because they have a hard time getting the bar back over their upper chest/shoulders without using leg drive to assist).

That’s what I’m seeing in the video. He’s pushing the bar with his sternum. That can only assist an angled press. It wouldn’t help a vertical presser. I wonder if this technique would do anything for someone not using leg drive. It’s mechanics are separate from leg drive right?

Great info as usual, Greg! I tried this “trick” in my last bench workout and I felt my upper pecs firing like never before while flat bench-pressing. Is it normal or am I doing something wrong? Thanks!

Tried this yesterday, I have never felt my entire pec engaged in bench before, wasn’t able to go as heavy as I previously could but I also didn’t end up feeling it more in my triceps/deltoids as I previously had. Looking forward to seeing how my strength progresses/chest develops with this method, thanks for the info, really looking forward to my next chest day!

After spending some time using Bar Sense for android to analyze my bench press bar path and playing around with it a bit I’m of the opinion that it might make sense to think of the upward arc in two parts. Looking at the Bill Kazmaier/Mike Bridges arcs you see that the top half moves further back than the bottom half. Being a smaller lifter without a dramatic back arch I find it nearly impossible to make the lower part of my lift move back. I can, however, make the top part of the arc move back over my shoulders. I think that any initial movement back off the chest has to come from leg drive off of an arch while the upper half derives more from willfully driving back over the shoulders. This also seems to be what’s implied by your “Top: good. Bottom: bad.” picture.

Hi Greg. Firstly this was a tremendous article. Secondly, although you mentioned at the end that you did not touch on horizontal forces; do you not think that the horizontal propulsion of the bar towards the face caused by good leg drive plays a huge role in getting the bar into that more efficient path?

If pushing the bar back at the beginning of the concentric is the most efficient bar path, would it not then be ideal to have your elbows slightly in front of the bar when it’s on your chest rather than directly underneath? To me that feels like a more natural position to achieve the correct motion.

Prior to reading this article, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been overly concerned with keeping my elbows tucked close to my sides, and pressing up and down directly over the chest. This has always left me in a somewhat awkward position at the bottom of the movement — particularly with heavy dumbbells. And there’s no doubt that my anterior delts are more developed than my chest, likely for this reason.

For DBs, really just make sure you keep them in a position that’s comfortable for your shoulders. If you can flare your elbows a bit more, it’ll probably target your chest a bit more, but that’s not worth shoulder discomfort if flaring increases discomfort.

Thanks for the great article. I’ve been trying to implement the bar path you suggested. So far, I have experimented with relatively light weight, and I find that to get the bar to really go back before it moves appreciably up, I need to flare out of the bottom which I feel in my shoulders. Not in a painful way, I just feel those muscle working more than I typically did off the chest when I had the more “novice” bar path.

Does that extra work of the shoulders make sense, or am I doing something wrong? Partly I’ve been thinking that perhaps with a light weight, you don’t get as far back as the bar moves up, as the moving up doesn’t require that much force.

Hi Greg, i feel like the cue of pressing to get the bar over the shoulder joint is just wrong. it ruins the whole rep and cancells my exercise. it feels like the weight is above the neck and there’s zero chest work.
What you told about bar path with getting it over your upper chest,however ,is a perfect advice! it finally,after years of a mid chest or mid xiphoid process to shoulder joint movement, grew impressive muscle mass in my chest. i advice myself to never get above or in the same level of the collarbone. just below the collar bone ,from the mid xiphoid process

Thanks for the article, I’ll definitely fix my bar path. Is there any benefit to NOT following the optimal bar path on higher volume, lower intensity sets? Would the most efficient path also be most conducive to hypertrophy?

Thank you very much for your articles, in particular I really have enjoyed this one.

A question I have at present from reading this is that while the study interprets what the best variation for bar path would be to achieve the best possible bench, it can also be noted that many of the individuals referenced here are very developed muscularly and have sufficient mass to manipulate bar weight in those ranges of motion. Would this muscle growth affect the ability of a lifter, ie; a natural powerlifter versus someone who has taken performance enhancing drugs. Not that that is being implied, but individuals such as those mentioned in the article are much more advanced and have a huge size/muscle advantage over the average lifter

I see it as a chicken/egg scenario. To bench well with a particular bar path, you need the muscles that are going to be specifically targeted by that bar path to be well-developed. However, benching with that particular bar path will probably be one of the most efficient ways (if not the most efficient way) to go about building that musculature. With that being said, I don’t think the efficacy of this bar path is predicated on being super muscular – it makes sense purely from a physics perspective.

[…] Stay tuned for the bench guide coming next week! Until then, check out some of the other bench articles on Strengtheory about why you should avoid over-tucking your elbows, and how to optimize your bar path. […]